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Old Hollywood, Anyone? Ghostly Parlor Face on a Tubes Femmes Image, 2023
What did the Mayfair Witches look like? Who did they resemble in the books? I started this page in the first few years after the site first launched in 2008...
Images are either clickable to open them at full size or you can right-click to open the image through the context menu. If any images do not open or display properly, please let me know.
Enjoy!
The Mayfair Witches Galleries
The Mayfair Witches Galleries
These galleries are collections of some of the approaches I've taken in trying to see if I could recreate the Mayfair Witches the way Anne Rice described them in the novels.
As more and more novels have made their way to the screen, more and more fans have used a wide range of newer technology to return to the source material--the novels themselves. We've seen some amazing graphics shared by users across various platforms showing the characters as described by their authors. The Game of Thrones series, including House of the Dragon, is one notable example.
There have been many fans who have taken this approach to the Vampire Chronicles, as well. The Parlor does have a newer section opened for discussing this series, which is far more well-known than the Mayfair Witches, yes. Lestat's Parlor opened during Season 2 of the recent AMC series, but also aims to provide more background on the publication history of Anne Rice's novel, and some of the graphics created that seemed to later inspire the screen adaptations of the novel and its many sequels.
The Mayfair Witches Parlor, however, remains primarily focused on the Lives of the Mayfair Witches. There is one page below that is a little different, though. The Mayfair emerald necklace. Many of us over the years have created images or graphics of what this piece of jewelry might look like. Then, I went back to the novel, The Witching Hour.
This is the wonderful part of things like Amazon Kindle. Once it indexes the books you buy, you can do a search like it's a concordance. And you can get an exact reference to include that will give the location in the ebook and, if the publisher includes this data, the corresponding page number in the Mass Market edition of the novel. So, I did a search for the emerald necklace.
Putting together a detailed description of the emerald necklace straight from the novel, I wanted to see what such a piece of jewelry would have looked like. An Internet search showed me a great deal, and gave me a much clearer idea of what an emerald necklace, a pendant necklace, might have looked like as Anne Rice described it. So, I put together the page below that discusses the Mayfair emerald of the novels. It includes some of the images I managed to find online. The necklace is such an integral part of the Mayfair Witches that I think it deserves discussion in its own right.
Please enjoy the galleries and projects, and everything else the Parlor has to offer. I hope it will help to bring more readers to discover and appreciate Anne Rice's extraordinary Lives of the Mayfair Witches novels.
A Mayfair Witches Vintage Gallery
A Mayfair Witches Vintage Gallery
When I first began to create a "face" of the Mayfair Witches, I wanted to do it in a way that showed them with similar facial features across the generations. What one would inherit from her forebears. I'd also made a 3D model of the Mayfair Emerald necklace (more than one, actually), and it was included on each Mayfair Witch shown here.
These were a combination of the faces and Mayfair Emerald I had made, and the series of Mayfair Witches made by Jennifer Harris for Idle Rogue's MAYFAIR: Stories of the Mayfair Witches. This was an animated dance production created in Second Life that can still be seen in two parts on YouTube.
I do have a video of the dance numbers of each witch (just the dance numbers) reworked into a continuous dance over two songs by Rusted Root. They are fast paced, and oddly enough, the dance numbers keep up! The two songs are also something of a memory trigger for me. They were played A LOT around the time I first read the Mayfair Witches novels.
If you're interested, I'd consider making the video available as a link on the Parlor.
These were the first images I made but certainly not the last ones as I wasn't satisfied with the faces. At one point I had available some animated versions and updated them with new blends to make the faces more realistic and not identifiable as any particular person. One project of mine: my own 3D versions of the Mayfair Witches. I'll leave these here for now, though.
Page and Screen
Page and Screen
Joan Crawford
So, what did the Mayfair Witches look like? Other characters? It might be fun to add more to this page, especially as (I hope) more characters in the Mayfair Witches series make it to the screen themselves...
Mary Beth Mayfair was said to resemble Joan Crawford.
Stella Mayfair was said to resemble Clara Bow.
Clara Bow
Ashley Judd
My Choice of Actress to Play Rowan Mayfair (several years ago):
Ashley Judd.
One of my favorite actresses, Ashley Judd has the deep voice, great beauty and presence that makes me think "Rowan Mayfair".
To try to imagine what Rowan Mayfair actually looks like based upon the descriptions of her in the books, I think Ashley Judd is the closest physical model of her. She is also the actress who would be able to portray her accurately and intelligently.
So, who did end up playing Rowan Mayfair?
Ashley Judd as a Blonde
Page to the Small Screen
Page to the Small Screen
In January 2023, AMC and AMC+ released Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches as a television series. Season 1, based mostly on The Witching Hour, the first novel in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches series, cast Alexandra Daddario as the main character, Rowan. However, the show does have some marked differences from the source material.
The first is that instead of naming the main character Rowan Mayfair in keeping with the novels, she was named Rowan Fielding. The character retained the profession of neurosurgeon, making her Dr. Rowan Fielding. The image above shows Dr. Rowan Fielding standing outside the Mayfair crypt during the entombment of her birth mother, Dierdre Mayfair. Behind her, you can see names of other Mayfairs entombed in the crypt, and the name of one who is not.
Rowan Mayfair.
Dierdre and the rest of the Mayfair family were told Rowan had died at birth, though this was not true. Still, it was still a moment that had an oddly chilling effect when I first saw the name of the character as it had been in the novels engraved on the crypt.
What of the rest of the Mayfair Witches, then? Other characters in the novels? To answer that question, a study of Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches on AMC is in order...
From the Archive
From the Archive
Mayfair Witches in Pictures, 2008-2023
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